Why Itâ€^™s More Difficult To Teach Your Child As Their Parent

In homes across the country last year, unsuspecting parents struggled with stepping into the teacher role. Children brought their classrooms home with them, and parents attempted to accommodate the changes. You may have been one of those parents! Some students thrived, but many others approached the at-home school day with dread. Why do parents (even parents who are teachers!) have so much more trouble teaching their children? Here are 5 reasons why: 

Criticism hurts more from a parent:

Think about how it feels for a doctor to tell you that maybe you should cut back on the cookies. Now, what if a family member stated that? That is one way to think about corrections coming from a child’s teacher vs. the same revisions coming from a child’s parent. A child expects to be corrected by their teacher – it’s the teacher's role. A child’s desire to please a parent goes deeper. This sensitivity can make learning with a parent more difficult, and teaching as a parent nearly impossible.  

Being physically present as a parent and a teacher is hard:

Think about all the multitasking you already do as a parent. Now throw in one of the most critical activities in your child’s development: school. School is so all-consuming that we ship our children off for most of their day, five days a week, to be immersed in learning. Even seasoned homeschooling parents can have a hard time focusing 100% on school the same way that a teacher does in a classroom. Most students are also juggling work on top of teaching their children at home, making it even more impossible to be tuned in at all times to your student’s schoolwork.  

Peer pressure:

One tool that children have inside the classroom that can not be duplicated with at-home learning is that they have a built-in incentive to perform and perform well in front of their peers. No matter how you frame it, your child is probably not trying to impress you in the same way they are trying to impress their friends. The added incentive of socialization and seeing their friends is another reason kids might be in a better mindset when they are going to school in a classroom rather than being unexpectedly stuck at home with a parent as their teacher.  

Educational methods have changed:

It has become a familiar refrain for parents to express frustration at Common Core methods for teaching math. This article suggests there are disconnects between parents understanding math learning and how kids learn today! The article states that in the past, US math education has encouraged the use of simple memorization. Think of times tables instead of digging for a deeper understanding of why the calculations parents simply memorized years ago make sense. While these sound like prominent developments, they are nevertheless frustrating for parents attempting to teach their children. Whether it is just helping with homework or full-on virtual/home school.

Parents tie their children's success to their parenting skills.

Even when parents are only on the sidelines, they tend to connect the failures or accomplishments of their children to how good of a job they are doing. Tie in a direct relationship, where the parent is also the one responsible for teaching their child, and the pressure is on. Failures are more catastrophic, resulting in more pressure being put on the child (and parent) to optimally perform. If it backfires, which is likely, the child could get overwhelmed and give up. Teachers care about the success of their students, but the problem with parents as teachers is that they may care... a little too much.  

You weren’t trained for this 

Finally, one more reason it’s so hard to teach your child is that even though you’ve been through school and been a student, you don’t automatically know how to teach school. And that’s okay. There is a reason people obtain advanced degrees to become teachers. Learning science is complicated and takes years to gain proficiency in. You can’t just put on your teacher hat and expect to have great success off right away. Can you get better? Sure! But maybe the heavy lifting is better left to the professionals.  

As virtual school becomes mostly a thing of the past (see ya, 2020!), the memories of how hard it was will fade a little bit. When those issues arise this summer as you are sitting at the kitchen table struggling to work through your child’s latest math homework with them, remember Mathnasium’s trained and experienced tutors are only a click away! 

Contact us today to get started!